Users may have many different accounts for a multitude of applications and services. Examples of applications and services may include social networking services, file sharing services, email services, voice communication services, office productivity services, task tracking services, and still others. A user may have to establish a corresponding username and password to authenticate for each account. This becomes a difficult and inconvenient practice where numerous accounts are involved. Accordingly, users may set weak passwords that are short or otherwise easy to remember, share passwords among multiple accounts, use third-party password managers, or engage in other practices that might be regarded as insecure. Also, if an application requires multi-factor authentication, a user needs to provide each factor for each application, which can be frustrating.
The concept of identity federation arose as a solution to this problem. Under identity federation, a user establishes an account with a federated identity provider. To this end, the user specifies a single set of security credentials. The federated account is then linked to a multiplicity of applications and services that are provided by other organizations. When the user seeks to access applications and services that are linked to the federated account, the user can simply provide the single username, password, or other credentials of the federated account for authentication. In like manner, an organization such as an enterprise may use a directory service such as ACTIVE DIRECTORY by MICROSOFT CORPORATION in order to provide a single log-in for each of multiple applications and services of the organization.
Despite the availability of identity federation, the end user experience may still be suboptimal. Even assuming that users are able to employ a single federated account for multiple applications and services, the users may be required to enter the federated account credentials separately. For example, suppose that a user logs in with a social networking application provided by a social networking service provider that is also a federated identity provider. Subsequently, the user may want to use a file sharing application that is linked to the federated identity provider. The user may then have to supply the same username and password that was previously entered for the social networking application. Repetitively entering these security credentials for each application and service may frustrate users.